


Why Don't You Come With Us?

by Hevheia



Series: The Old Guard Duolingo Prompts [8]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Booker as a young immortal, Booker | Sebastian le Livre & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani Friendship, Canon-typical Temporary Character Death, Depressed Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Found Family, Grief/Mourning, Mild Gore, The Guard Adopts Booker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:21:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27121057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hevheia/pseuds/Hevheia
Summary: Sebastien does not know how they find him because even he does not know where he is anymore. There’s only this endless ice, this perpetual snowfall that lives within him and clogs his ribs. He’s so cold, so cold.Part of the The Old Guard Duolingo prompts series: a series I started posting on tumblr where I take random sentences from duolingo and use them as prompts for small drabbles of our favourite immortals!
Series: The Old Guard Duolingo Prompts [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1952467
Comments: 9
Kudos: 53





	Why Don't You Come With Us?

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Why don’t you come with us? (Perché non vieni con noi?)

Sebastien does not know how they find him because even he does not know where he is anymore. There’s only this endless ice, this perpetual snowfall that lives within him and clogs his ribs. He’s so cold, so cold. He tries to find relief, to warm his chilly bones with alcohol, but it does not work as well as it used to. It only grants brief pinpricks of release ever since- ever since...

Voices are behind him, hands on his back. He fights and struggles and dies. When he draws breath again ( _no please not again_ ), faces swim into view. Two men are looking at him, a curious mixture of concern and marvel in their eyes. A woman is standing behind them, cleaning sebastien’s blood from her axe. 

He knows them, Sebastien realises with a pang. He has been dreaming of them. Dreams that left him exhausted night after night after night.

“What have you done to me?” he snarls. “Who are you?”

The man on the right, the one with the curls, opens his mouth to say something, but the woman steps forward and the men step aside for her. 

“We’re like you,” the woman says as she crouches in front of sebastien. She reaches out her hand, offering. “Why don’t you come with us?”

Like him? Soldiers? Deserters? Fugitives? No, he knows what she means, he can read it in her eyes, but his mind is not ready yet. 

He takes her hand.

*

He remembers the noose, relentless and abrasive. He remembers choking. Three days of it. Choking and dangling and pretending to be dead. Praying to be. He remembers the cold (it has never left him), the hunger, the fatigue. He remembers the army leaving and the crows coming to pick at his frozen flesh. He remembers the taste of blood on his tongue, metallic and warm and disgusting, swallowing raw meat with feathers and all. He remembers falling and bones breaking and healing and wandering, endless wandering with no direction or purpose.

He could not go home, even if he had known where it was. It would have brought his family in danger. Only the thought of them made him fall to his knees in the snow, arms tight around himself to not shatter into pieces. 

He remembers the last time he held each of his boys in his arms, still too young to understand where papa was going. The last time he made them laugh and giggle and run around screaming while playing. He remembers the last time he felt his wife’s soft lips, his own whispering how much he loved her against them. He remembers her smile on their wedding day, her nimble fingers and the concentrated set of her jaw as she helped him in his forgeries, the way her body swayed against his as they danced. He remembers the tears rolling down her cheeks as they said goodbye even though he reassured her he would be back so soon she would not even notice.

_I have not left you,_ he would say to the cold, unforgiving night. _I have told many lies in my life, but that was not one of them._

*

He likes his new regiment, however small and improbable it is. He admires Andromache’s no-nonsense manner and her skill with any weapon she takes in her hands, and he feels drawn to the grief she is carrying even though she hides it like a master forger. He does not quite know what to think of Nicolo yet, he is mostly quiet and hard to read, but when he says something, he never fails to surprise Sebastien. It is Yusuf though whom Sebastien instantly feels at ease with. They share some interests but find they often have opposing opinions on matters, leading to endless but not unpleasant discussions that result in playful bickering. Yusuf makes him laugh again, and sometimes it is even genuine.

So it is to Yusuf he says, “I want to see them again. One last time, before they...”

Yusuf looks at him in silence for a long time, his concerned eyes reminding Sebastien of all the times they talked to him about why it is not a good idea. 

“Please,” Sebastien whispers, tears stinging in his eyes. 

Yusuf sighs and nods, and Sebastien hugs him in relief.

*

Of course it all went wrong. Of course his only living son, his little boy, his Jean Pierre, his _youngest_ who looked more like he was his brother, was dying and broken and furious. Of course Sebastien fell apart right after.

But time wears on relentlessly for him, eroding the edges of the pain, etching it into him until it is a part of him. A dull throb that is always there, at the back of his mind, at the back of his heart.

He finds love again. In the people who found him when he was utterly lost. And some of the ice thaws inside his chest, leaving a mushy but malleable puddle. But the cold is still there.

The cold never leaves him.

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think, I'd love to hear it!<3


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